A Clinical Information system (CIS) may use a large number of templates (such as clinical assessment forms and order sets i.e. lists of candidate treatment items for order for administration to a patient) that users can select to facilitate data entry and ordering treatment for a patient. A more advanced CIS may select the templates for the user and may also combine multiple templates into a single ad-hoc template deemed to be appropriate for a current situation. Templates used to create ad-hoc templates typically contain fewer items than templates selected by the user. As a result, the number of templates used by a more advanced CIS is significantly higher (many thousands rather than hundreds). This makes it difficult to identify which templates need to be modified and what content or template selection criteria needs to be changed to yield the highest benefit for overall use of the CIS. Anecdotal evidence and personal experience is no longer sufficient.
Known CIS systems do not compile statistics on how often template items are used, how often those items were not used and how many items were added by the users on an ad-hoc basis to complete a data entry task. System administrators and analysts use anecdotal evidence (like user complaints and change requests), personal experience or sometimes statistics collected on an ad-hoc basis to identify which templates should be changed and what changes should be made to yield a highest cost-benefit trade-off.
Changes made to templates in known systems are typically sub-optimal because incomplete and sometimes misleading information is used to determine what to change. Priorities are often based on subjective criteria (such as who complains the loudest) rather than on objective criteria that point to the highest benefits for an entire CIS user community. Also, users are apt to accept without formally complaining, larger then necessary templates, because the required data is on the template. It just takes more time the scroll up or down to find it. This lengthens data entry tasks unnecessarily because opportunities to remove unused items from templates go unnoticed.
A system according to invention principles addresses the identified deficiencies and related problems and allows templates to be compared in a consistent manner and systematically identifies what templates need to be changed and which changes yield the highest benefits.